Keyboard Jeans Are True 'Laptop'

We recently told you about ear bud-equipped hoodies and a pair of scratch-and-sniff jeans that have been turning a few heads and noses in the normally slipshod world of techie fashion. Well, now there's a new kid sashaying down that catwalk.

New to the boutique world of concept clothing for techies comes Beauty and the Geek. (No, not the canceled reality show.) They're a pair of jeans with a set of speakers, a wireless mouse and a keyboard embedded into the upper thigh regions. Imagine typing — literally — on your lap and you get the picture.

The dungarees of the dot com age are the brainchild of Dutch twenty-somethings, Erik de Nijs and Tim Smit, of design company Nieuwe Heren, which translates to "new gents."

The jeans were designed to "combine fashion and technology," de Nijs told WebProNews. "The idea was that you could log in to your computer and control it without sitting in a closed environment behind your desk."

Aesthetically, the jeans have two things going for them — what looks to be quality denim and, arguably the best feature, their orange stitching embroidered to resemble a circuit board.

After those two positive marks, the jeans veer into the is-this-really-necessary category. However, the keyboard's ergonomic, left-thigh placement of the alphabet could be Beauty and the Geek's saving grace. But with the return key unfortunately located in the jeans' crotch, I'm envisioning some very strange stares, perhaps even a call to the decency police, should you choose to peck away in public.

But they are functional, so let's take a look at their specs.

The right back pocket has been specially designed so the mouse fits snugly inside. The mouse is connected to the jeans via a strip of elastic and the pants come with a USB device that plugs into users' computers so a wireless connection can be maintained.

Don't plan on plucking these off the rack just yet. "The whole project is too complex and we don’t have enough money right now to to get it ready for the market," de Nijs said. Even if they did, he said the estimated cost would be almost $400.

For that kind of money, you could buy a laptop. While you won't find me dashing to the nearest retailer, should Beauty and the Geek come to market, I would take a pair for a test drive. Just not in public.